In Eltham Lodge that stately pile dating back to 1664 on National Heritage Week with my friend Jean

National Heritage Week is a pretty neat idea. 

This years just ended and so I decided ti revisit a story from last year,

During the week plenty of old places from stately homes to swimming baths and more than a few Victorian cemeteries are opened up for the curious, the historically minded and those who just want to gawp.

I could have chosen the Victorian Baths on Hathersage Road, Southern Cemetery or even the Chorlton Eco Showroom which “is a lovingly refurbished old Arts and Crafts semi detached home in Chorltonville.”

My friend Jean went for Eltham Palace and Eltham Lodge.  The latter is  a pretty impressive pile which now serves as the club house of the Royal Blackheath Golf Club.

It was built in 1664 by the banker Sir John Shaw and was regarded by many as a very stately mansion befitting someone who had assisted Charles II while he was in exile.

Sir John’s reward had been the lease of the manor of Eltham in 1663 which ran “from Southend to Horne park, Lee, embracing the old ‘ruinated Palace (Eltham Court), and all the rights of fishing, hawking, hunting, &c., for the sum of £9 per annum, with 20s. additional for the old House.”*

And there was still plenty there when Benjamin and Anna Wood occupied the place in 1838 for according to the tithe schedule the estate consisted of 144 acres which included the 48 acres of Front or North Park, the 74 acres of South Park along with three large ponds, “pleasure gardens, assorted out buildings, smaller gardens and part of the Park Icehouse."

So all in all not a place to miss when its doors were thrown open and because I doubt I will ever get back to visit the place Jean shared some of her pictures of this elegant house.

So next year when Heritage Week comes round I may just zip back to Eltham and parade myself through the grand rooms of Eltham Lodge and ponder on whether the walls will talk to me of Sir John and Benjamin and Anna Wood.

We shall see.

*Rev. T.N. Roswell, Eltham Golf Course, 1895, now out of print.  Quoted by R.R.C.Gregory, The Story of Royal Eltham


Pictures; Eltham Lodge in 1909, from The story of Royal Eltham, R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 and published on The story of Royal Eltham, by Roy Ayers, http://www.gregory.elthamhistory.org.uk/bookpages/i001.htm and the Lodge in 2013 from the collection of Jean Gammons